"You weren't worried that I might kill you?" Esther asked.
"I hoped you wouldn't." AnnMarie said. "And if you did, then... oh well."
-‐------------------------------‐-------------------------
Esther LaGrange never stays in one place too long...
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They got back to the hotel not long later, though AnnMarie did stop to order takeout on the way back. When they arrived back, Esther watched AnnMarie carefully as she ate a bowl of fried rice, feeling slightly angry about the fact that it smelled so good, though she tried to hide her frustration from AnnMarie.
When she was finished eating, they sat across from each other on the bed, and AnnMarie emptied the paper bag, which was filled with a hefty stack of books. They were all very worn, showing obvious signs of age. The spines had split, the pages were yellow and begging to chip.
Esther picked them up one by one and glanced over the titles with a frown.
"Half of these books are focused on summoning spirits." She said as she looked through them.
AnnMarie looked up from the book she was currently thumbing through.
"The witch from the shop told me that the only way to know for sure how to break a blood curse was to ask the person who placed it on the bloodline." AnnMarie said. "Apparently it's a lot different from a simple curse."
"I guess it means that person is dead then?" Esther said.
AnnMarie grimaced, and glanced to the side.
"As far as I know." She said. "It"s been in my family as far back as my mama could remember."
"But you don't know who placed it?" Esther asked.
AnnMarie shook her head.
"No. My mama wouldn't hardly talk to me about it. The only time she even got close to talking about it was when she was yelling at me for making friends. She would tell me how selfish I was and how I should feel ashamed of it. Any other time she just acted like it didn't exist."
"So then what should our next move be?" Esther said, mostly to herself. "Would we have to summon one of your ancestors and then ask them who placed the curse?"
AnnMarie let out a small huff of air, and the look on her face made Esther assume she didn't want to contact her ancestors, even in ghost form. Her brow furrowed, but then softened after a moment.
"There's a lot of stuff up in my attic." AnnMarie said. "A lot of it is pretty old, and I've never gone up there to look through it because the attic gives me the creeps. It's too close to that weird room. There could be something up there that could help us."
Esther remembered seeing the piles of boxes up there when she had ventured up into the attic a couple of months ago, but she hadn't bothered to check any of them at the time. They had seemed like junk.
"It's worth a shot, since we're going on nothing at the moment." Esther said.
"Maybe we should make a list." AnnMarie suggested.
With a nod of agreement, Esther reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the notepad that sat by the lamp.
"Okay, so-" AnnMarie started. "First thing first, we need to figure out who the person who placed the curse is."
